exploring potential and possibility

Archive for the month “February, 2018”

Every year, as winter changes to spring, Sherwood Forest Faire begins. I love the Faire. The first year I went, I found an SCA friend running a booth – Tobar Tinker’s Pawn Shop. He was in need of some extra help – and he was willing to get me an employee pass if I would help out for the rest of the season. I jumped at the offer.

And I found I love working at the Faire. I’m not a sales person, but I have skills that make a difference for the shop. And I’ve made friends I look forward to seeing each year. I always plan to do more preparation before Faire – but I rarely actually get it done.

This year is different. I’ve been meaning for a couple of years now to make a dual layer capelet – I have a lovely, heavy cloak, but as cashier, I can’t keep the front of the cloak closed when I’m working. A capelet, with arm slits, is a much better choice. Finally, earlier this month, I cut the capelet out and sewed it together. Now I’m just decorating it.

Another project – a more period style account ledger. Because of the kind of business we do, its hard to automate. We’re trying, but we keep a paper record of sales and purchases. In the past we’ve used a regular notebook and pen. Over the past couple of years, I’ve started using a dip pen and ink, but the notebook was still distracting. This year, I think I may have figured out how to create a medieval looking ledger book that will adapt to the volume of business that we do from weekend to weekend.

One last bit of prepping I have to do this yeart won’t happen until next week after I’ve talked to my boss. I’ll need to update the Terms of Service and “How the Shop Works” and inventory sheets for this year. That’s all on the computer, so it’s pretty quick and easy.

It’s nice to be ahead of the game this year and actually have done some of the things I’ve been saying I wanted to do for a couple of seasons.

I haven’t been doing SCA events for quite awhile. Part of the reason is because I had let all my SCA projects and interests fall by the wayside. I decided I wanted to get those interests moving again. To do that I decided to participate in the 100 Days of Arts & Sciences Lite challenge.

If you’d like to see my day to day progess, you can look for #100DaysofASLite on Facebook and Twitter. This is just going to be an overall update of how I’m doing so far.

Days 1-12

Gathering supplies

Research

Choosing methods

Refreshing my skill at making Lucet cords

Due to general life circumstances, I didn’t do any A&S work during the second half of January. Since I’m doing the Lite version of this challenge, I’m not starting over. I just pickws up with Day 13.